DRUSILLA (Δροσώλια). — Third daughter of Herod Agrippa I, sister of Agrippa II, Berenice, and Mariamme.
She was six years old at her father’s death (A.D. 44), by whom, about a year earlier, she had been betrothed to Epiphanes, son of Antiochus IV of Commagene, on the understanding that he would convert to Judaism. But Epiphanes subsequently refused to submit to circumcision, and the marriage did not take place. Aziz, king of Emesa, did submit to it, however, and D. married him at about fifteen (Flavius Josephus, Antiq. Iud. XIX, 9, 1; XX, 7, 1). Two years later, however, she yielded to the blandishments of the procurator Felix, who, captivated by her extraordinary beauty, made her his wife, with the complicity of a magician from Cyprus, a Jew named Simon (or Atomos: variant in Antiq. Iud., XX, 7, 2). By Felix, D. had a son, who perished either with her or with his own wife (Flavius’s expression is ambiguous) in the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 (Antiq., Iud., XX, 7, 2). D., who, like other aristocratic Jewish women of the period, ostentatiously displayed an interest in religious questions, appears alongside Felix in an almost confidential encounter with Paul during his imprisonment at Caesarea (Act. 24, 24 ff.). The Apostle spoke “of justice, self-control, and the coming judgment,” thus striking Felix to the quick. Since Suetonius (Claudius,
28) calls Felix “the husband of three queens,” while Tacitus (Hist., V, 9), for his part, says that D., Felix’s wife, was the granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra, it has been thought that the procurator had two wives named D. Probably this is merely an inaccuracy on Tacitus’s part,